She looked up. ‘Not a lot. He’s hiding something, but he’s not talking.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got a warrant to search his yard. It still seems as if Pawel Krukowski disappeared into thin air. And I don’t believe in magic.’

‘The search team arrived just as I was leaving.’

She looked across the table at him. ‘Tell me that you got on better with Susan Coulson.’

‘I’m not sure. She lived on the ground floor of the house and saw Margaret’s clients coming and going. There weren’t many of them. But all respectable men, she said. Professionals. A vicar even. She claims not to know any names.’

‘That doesn’t get us any further then.’ Vera looked up at him and he saw how tired she was. She’d burned herself out with her excitement of the day before. Perhaps she was no longer so convinced by her idea that Margaret had killed her husband.

‘Susan mentioned the landlady of the Coble. The woman called Val. And her son, Rick. Val’s probably dead by now, but the man might still be around. Do you know if Charlie ever traced him?’

‘He hasn’t said.’ Vera was preoccupied.

Joe persisted. ‘There’d have been gossip in the neighbourhood about Margaret. Not something you could keep secret in a place like Harbour Street: strangers turning up at her door.’ Joe knew he was throwing Vera these ideas in the hope of cheering her up. ‘I thought it might be useful to talk to people who were around at the time, but not involved in the present case.’

‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You’re probably right. See if Charlie has managed to get anything on this Rick. He’s babysitting Kerr in the house in Percy Street.’ But there was no enthusiasm in her words and she got up suddenly and stomped away from him and back to her office. She sat there with her door shut until mid-afternoon, when she left without a word. Joe knew she’d be going back to Harbour Street. The tension of waiting for the search results would be killing her and she couldn’t stop herself from meddling.

Charlie answered his phone on the first ring and told Joe to hang on until he found somewhere private so that they could talk.

‘How’s it going?’ Joe could tell from the first response to the call that Charlie was gloomy.

‘Well, I can think of better ways to spend the week before Christmas.’

‘Have you tracked down that mother and son who used to run the pub in Harbour Street?’

Charlie hardly paused for a beat. ‘The Butts? I haven’t got anything on the man, but the mother still lives in Mardle. The address is on my desk.’ And then he was gone.